


a sidestory

by samarqand



Category: Marvel 616, Punisher (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 10:12:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1895193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samarqand/pseuds/samarqand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re not gonna remake me in your image, Frank,” Henry murmurs, just as Frank turns away from him.  “I won’t be you, okay?  I won’t be immovable.  I won’t pretend I don’t worry.  And,” he finishes, “I think you’re really damn lucky for it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	a sidestory

**Author's Note:**

> A very belated, strange sort of birthday fic for Peps, with love and love and love.

After Henry gets Frank back from death in abstract, the days return to an abnormal normality. The “everyday” means the string on a guitar snapping, but just before the snap. “Everyday” is the crack of a bullet exiting the chamber, but the vacuum of sound just before the crack.

Nothing here knows how to give way with such relief and such release. Because it isn’t like Frank to give way. It isn’t like Henry to yield. “Everyday” means the still before the storm, and the storm nowhere in sight. 

If he paused to think about it (which he tries his damnedest not to), he might even begin dreading what happens on the other side of that liminal “everyday.”

He knows it, of course: Frank’s certain and lasting death. He doesn’t remind himself (but it happens that he is reminded on so many of these nights) that death can easily happen to Frank again. 

How will it happen, and when, and then what?

 _Then what?_ , and the way it freezes Henry’s fingers on the keyboard and his eyes fall from the glowing screens, unfocused. If Frank were available to notice, he would call it distraction.

So he keeps himself preoccupied these days, checking Frank’s bandages on schedule, force-feeding him warm things, goading him into debriefings when he returns from another night spent lonely but for Henry’s voice as company. 

He puts himself to work proving himself indispensable, one of a two-person retinue.

The safest fear that Henry allows himself is that Frank will start to hate him for all his caring. 

More than he already might.

Knife in hand, Henry turns from an unsteady fold-out table as Frank slams the heavy door shut behind him.

Tough and indefatigable Frank, his coat torn and his boots tracking in mud -- he spares not Henry, but Henry’s knife a glance.

“Tough crowd tonight,” Henry assesses, having heard it all resounding and riotous through his earphones. He’d had to tear them off, give himself five seconds to press his hands to his grave young face. 

The world’s end in any mythology, any stretch of imagination, would be a loud one. Drums, trumpets. All that can fall, falling. 

Seems Armageddon gifted Henry a sneak preview: Frank the immaculate conduit of destruction.

Heedless of the mess on him, Frank invades Henry’s workspace where the carrots and zucchini gleam chopped and waiting on the cutting board. Henry smells pungent sweat and blood as Frank sticks his head under the little sink’s faucet, twists the tap, and drinks.

Henry crosses his arms. “I didn’t like what I heard.”

“Get used to it,” Frank mutters, inching backward and stripping off a sullied glove to wipe his mouth with his bare hand.

“It didn’t sound good on your end, Frank,” Henry clarifies, ornery. “You run into trouble? I’m gonna pick up on it.”

“Surprised you heard through all your chattering.”

Henry bristles and turns back to his chopping before he can give Frank the advantage of seeing him riled. “Right, yeah. Apologies for _doing what you ask_ , Frank. I’m cluing you in. I’m watching your back. And I’m not too shabby, am I? That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? That’s the idea, I look out for -- “

“You sounded scared.”

Henry’s attempt to arrange his face into indolence flounders just as it shapes. It takes another moment of mechanically pressing the knife into zucchini, creating neat, measured slices as he goes, before he blinks hard and rallies a retort: “Good ear, Frank. I was.”

Frank sheds his coat somewhere behind Henry with in a heaving rustle. Most likely lays the filthy thing over one of their few chairs. Henry exhales through his teeth.

Frank’s level cadence comes from closer than he anticipated: “You let the fear through, you’ll freeze. Forget what it is you’re supposed to do.”

The knife pauses mid-slice, Henry matching Frank’s invidious judgment with indignation. “Like hell I’ve ever -- “

“You forget, you’re no good here.”

Henry turns to meet Frank’s gaze with a scowl, drawing his knife in close to his body like a talisman -- as though he could fend off the cold in Frank's sentiment even though it has already plowed into him and rendered him silent.

Until --

“You’re bleeding,” Henry notices.

A curve cuts neatly along Frank’s bared bicep. Talons or razors. Henry approaches with a clean, dampened dish towel in hand. 

“Superficial,” Frank assesses for Henry. More a smearing, like war paint across Frank’s skin.

“Great,” Henry retorts to divert any attention from his nerves as he advances on Frank anyway. Feels like confrontation to care when Frank is standing here reasoning that he doesn't warrant care -- feels like a braver thing to do than Henry would've reckoned. Feels like Henry might care too much. “'Cause more than a trickle of blood and I’m down for the count. I’ll faint on you.”

Strict as the framing of a waltz, Henry's hand alights on the crook of Frank’s arm. His other hand takes a few swipes at Frank’s skin with the towel, just to see, just to be sure he’s doing what he can. “And anywhere else?” he asks, as he cleans the area. He’ll argue antiseptic after Frank’s shower.

Frank turns over his forearm to show Henry where the skin has been scraped to a ragged, blood-spackled patch. That's contact against asphalt. 

Henry winces at the sight.

“Reminds me of the scrapes I got early on, learning to board,” he answers. “I got some mean ones. And they were the things that hurt the most. Forget the bruises, or the gashes -- no problem with stitches. The scrapes always threw me.”

He presses the damp end of the dishtowel against Frank’s forearm, taking the opportunity to cradle the back of Frank’s hand. The rough, abrupt jut of knuckles boring roundly into Henry’s palm, reminding him of a line of cherry pits.

“Pretty sure I know why that was,” Henry elaborates after a moment spent nursing his memory. And maybe Frank marks it, the way Henry’s mouth twists for a second, the way he blinks slower now.

If Frank hasn’t eradicated all traces of empathy yet.

If he still can identify a feeling. 

If Henry wouldn’t need to tell him.

If showing could be enough.

Good one.

“It kinda brought me back to how important the small stuff was when I was little. You trip, or you get pushed, and suddenly it's a taste of how powerless you can be in the face of -- life. But it freaks you out to discover it.” Henry presses the towel firmly where it bleeds, impressing the spots of red into the fibers and covering Frank’s hurt like he means to conjure comfort in this of all places, with Frank of all people. “Take off the skin like this -- you see ‘human’ written all over you.”

Frank’s muscles tense beneath Henry’s touch. He means to retreat to the bathroom. _Let him_ , Henry decides churlishly, but his eyes follow down Frank’s arm to the lines of his palm. His mother reads palms. He likes that about her -- sometime in his adolescence, she told him she would learn palmistry, and then she went and did it. He admires her minute victory -- she’d known what she wanted, and amid her brutal surroundings, she’d taken it.

Henry bites the inside of his cheek and removes his hands from Frank’s.

“You’re not gonna remake me in your image, Frank,” he murmurs, just as Frank turns away from him. “I won’t be you, okay? I won’t be immovable. I won’t pretend I don’t worry. And,” he finishes, “I think you’re really damn lucky for it.”

Frank, more gingerly than usual, undoes his body armor and pulls off his shirt. He tosses them both onto his cot in a rumpled pile and opens the bathroom door.

“Hear me?” Henry presses, timidity deflating him.

“Ten-four,” Frank returns, as though Henry were distant still, a whisper on the radio.

 

*

 

Frank emerges in a haze of steam fifteen minutes later, shirtless, as Henry prods a mug of steaming tea across the table. “No caffeine,” he qualifies, offhanded. The hunch of his shoulders nakedly reads abashed, a few minutes alone having turned out too reflective.

Frank nears Henry on the beeline to the fridge, to a beer.

“I got ears on your guys up in Harlem,” Henry says as he retreats from Frank’s indifference with the mug in his hand. Just the two of us in our corner, then. “All quiet on the northern front. You took out anybody who was anybody, looks like.”

Henry sits back on his cot, maintaining and cradling the distance between them. It’s a bad habit, he recognizes -- slipping into the familiarity of discontent and loneliness. The old miseries of his mother’s home, back when "father" was a whispered threat, and apprehensive isolation tightened like a vice around his throat, turning him meek and quiet. The way he’d keep surviving, and it was almost enough, but never. 

“So,” concludes Henry.

“So,” Frank returns. Frank is glancing to the side as he pops open the beer, reviewing the fast scrawl of Henry’s penned notes by the flickering light of those surveillance screens. He always prefers hard copies of intel, Frank does. 

Henry hunches his shoulders when Frank touches the notepad, a sort of careworn interest in the way he paws it closer -- a gesture Henry takes to quickly. A change. 

“I can’t read this.”

“Good penmanship is moribund. That beautiful cursive of yours is going extinct when you do.”

Frank huffs. Henry leans himself against the wall with a thunk, tea sloshing from his mug as he watches Frank's relaxed figure. A change -- a good change.

He watches Frank tip his head back to take an indulgent few gulps of something cheap -- nearly polish off the whole thing in seconds. The shadowy light the screens cast glances off the contours of Frank’s muscles and scars, questions Henry wonders when he’ll be able to ask; and there’s the dark of hair on his body, the sheen of the hair on his head.

Then Frank sets the beer down and turns to see Henry. 

Henry quickly takes a sip of his tea -- too hot. Cringes around the ceramic curve of the lip, keeps soldiering through the burning tea. Come to realize Frank doesn't so often look at the front of him, not like this.

Henry glances over his mug as Frank nears his cot, takes another sip of lavender-chamomile, finds a jagging scar that drags down Frank’s ribs, and squeezes his attention there.

“New York State law requires a forty-five minute break for those employed on a shift lasting between 1 PM and 6 AM,” he recites in his defense.

“You’re not employed here.”

“Then it's funny how you come off like you think you’re the boss of me.”

Frank’s mouth lengthens. Henry recognizes it for ire.

“Sit down, Frank.” Henry scoots on his cot to make room, feeling a change as he reaches for the desk next to them, casting about for an antibacterial ointment amid the clutter. The cot dips precipitously when Frank settles beside him, tilting Henry in toward Frank’s weight. 

Strange to drink in Frank’s power and stature free from the lens of fear. Strange to not fear any part of Frank anymore. Strange to feel himself worthy. Turning himself awkwardly toward Frank, Henry slicks ointment on his fingers.

“Okay,” he says, as if to assure them both. He traces the outlines of the broken skin on Frank’s bicep. Draws his slicked fingers lightly over the red, open wound, merciful -- not for Frank’s comfort (lost on Frank), but to express.

Under his fingers, Frank moves, but pliantly, unperturbed. 

Henry smooths a touch more ointment in his fingers and, emboldened, he turns over Frank’s forearm to run his fingers over every rip and and abrasion, every bumping tear that covers his skin like a pattern, or sheet music, or now Frank is looking at him plainly, not at his hands, but at him, and he freezes like he told himself he wouldn’t.

He finds himself clutching Frank’s arm where it must hurt Frank, closed over the scrape.

“So,” Henry tries again.

“So,” says Frank.

Henry’s mouth twitches as he suppresses a wide, nervous grin. All the brighter ideas in him have tumbled out somewhere along the way. No accounting for them now, now that he’s clutching Frank’s arm as if Frank were about ready to leave him forever.

Frank’s hand catches his; the insistence in those fingers surprises Henry, and he clutches at Frank right back, as if to placate.

“You’re incriminating yourself,” Frank tells him.

“Incriminating myself how?” He stares at that scar striped down Frank’s ribs and thinks of his own scars, thinks of Frank as a salve that burns against him.

Frank doesn’t answer -- which is the answer, that there is no answer Frank could give that Henry doesn’t already know himself.

“I won’t pretend like this isn't,” Henry starts firmly, only to fumble. 

Stop. Quiet. Inhale. 

“I won’t pretend,” he attempts. 

Fails. 

“I won’t.”

Frank has learned the meaning of the deep line between Henry’s knitted brows, the exasperation scratched onto his face, the ceaseless _trying_ in every inch of him. The feelings that such resolve will carry with it.

And Frank, and yet, he doesn’t go.

They are close -- a collusive closeness. Clandestine. Embarrassed, even, on Henry’s part -- but a heart-rending embarrassed that keeps his grip on Frank’s closed like a lock.

“I’m still alive and I’m still here, y’know, and so are you, and that’s -- ,” Henry begins again, ardently. The words sound dissonant now, and what’s left is the space closing between their bodies. 

Gradually, carefully, Henry leans against Frank.

It happens. Present tense, real, Frank does not go. 

Fixed to Frank’s warm shoulder and delicately keeping his full weight off Frank’s arm, Henry fixates on that messy little jumble of fingers they’ve made together.

He wants to adjust himself to find more comfort, more of Frank to fit against. He doesn’t dare. He drowns himself instead in a silent _once, for once, for once, for once, for once, just once._

Only once his thudding heart begins to calm does Frank move. It kicks Henry out of his mantra, and he looks up at Frank to find him glancing down at Henry. To upbraid him, or cast judgment, or ask another question --

Frank loosens his grip on Henry’s. He extricates his fingers when Henry sluggishly, sheepishly releases his hold. And then he curls his hand over Henry’s knee.

Henry feels the temperature of the safehouse spike high.

His knee, his leg -- he grows keenly aware of their existence. His body, and its proximity to Frank. The way Frank can see him now, if he wants -- and he does want.

Henry’s lips part. He pushes himself up onto both knees, feeling (aware, alive) Frank’s hand fall to press against his thigh. 

Pitching forward -- nearly falters. Inhales Irish Spring soap and warmth off of Frank and holds it inside him long enough so that he'll remember.

He kisses the corner of Frank’s mouth in warning, and then kisses Frank’s dry, closed lips in confession.

Lips press supplicating and chaste against lips, until Frank makes to push him away. 

Unwilling to risk an even greater failure, Henry beats Frank to to it: he careens backward awkwardly to sit down again on the cot.

The mug of tea next to Henry upsets and spills across the sheets and his jeans, soaks into Frank’s canvassy trousers.

“Oh,” Henry utters dumbly, pulling himself onto his feet.

Frank’s hand catches him by his elbow.

Lip worried between his teeth, face lit with humiliation, Henry looks at the terrible scar on Frank. He could memorize every arc and splay of raised flesh, the wan shade -- he could approximate a timeline, with all his smarts and all Frank’s marks. Every one of these hurts were felt and then not felt long before Henry could’ve ever hoped to be around to --

He sinks back down onto the wet cot. The smell of lavender and chamomile sticks on the cold sheets. 

Frank’s hand fits just so around his wrist. It insists him close again with a gruff pull, _now_ , touch and smell and sight and Henry licks his lips and finds Frank could be there still to taste, too, and the contact of Frank's asking hand sings through Henry’s body, bashes through his tension. And he’s getting hard. Like he’s desperate, God, so hooked on hope, like he’s been dying for this --

Frank doesn’t let go. He doesn’t go.

Leaning in close again, ginger and eager as a feral animal, Henry presses his lips against Frank’s jaw, his chin. Stubble prickles his skin.

A noisy exhale escapes Henry, unbidden and undeniable. 

He feels terrified now, an ancient fear that imposes and urges him to recognize need.

How daunting, that word.

Unseeingly, Henry's hand finds the scar he’d taken such care to learn with his eyes. Frank’s muscles (so strong) underneath the insensate old wound have their weight and give, solid and vibrant with force, and Henry realizes: his hand is shaking. All of him is shaking. 

When he finds Frank’s eyes, Frank is watching him with an unreadable expression.

But Frank pulls at him all the same -- come.

Closer --

Reckless and jittery, Henry pulls right back. He lies back against the cot, guiding Frank to follow until Frank’s hands are the ones doing the asking, impressing him into the old, coarse bedding. The puddle of tea, freezing now, startles Henry as his lower back eases into it. He arches with a little hiccup of breath, bumps against Frank’s arms where they’ve settled on either side of him, barring him in.

His legs spread wide to bracket Frank where he kneels between them. It feels vulnerable when Frank moves his grip from wrist to his thigh, keeping him spread open where he wants him to be. Raw, somehow hallowed.

“Frank,” Henry says, fervent with --

Frank dips his head down and moves his mouth against Henry’s neck, finding the artery with a killer’s expediency, and pausing to feel the racket of Henry’s racing pulse.

Henry tenses, that shivering relentless -- and with more courage than he could’ve imagined it would take, he tips his head back against the flat pillow, exposing more of his neck to Frank.

Cause and effect. Simple in application: when he swallows, Frank’s mouth follows to his Adam’s apple, lips and teeth. When he sucks in a tremulous breath, Frank’s nose touches against the hollow of his throat. When he exhales with a fretting noise, Frank’s tongue presses into that dip --

Henry bolts upright. Frank’s forehead knocks against his bony chest.

“I -- didn’t --,” Henry sputters out. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

Frank looks down at him with a trace of expectation, expectation for Henry to --

Feeling crumpled, Henry props himself up with his elbows. “Frank -- “

Frank touches at his forehead with a pensive appreciation for the pain Henry’s thin frame left. “What do you want?” Sudden; dangerously neutral. 

A wide-eyed look befalls Henry’s face. How to ask for -- for what? For Frank to intercede for him, to move him, stop him, undo him --

Henry searches Frank’s face for insinuation, for forewarning. He comes up short. 

If there are magic words to keep what exists now, keeping him flat against the cot and legs wide open and lips tingling where he wants to feel Frank again and again, he cannot conjure them up.

Shaking still. Shaking with nerves and want.

“Say it.”

Henry bites his tongue viciously. His fingers reach up and touch at the hollow of his throat. Damp -- his lips part of their own volition.

“Say it,” Frank enunciates, moves as if to --

“-- Stay.”

Frank does it. Frank halts, right there.

The edge in Henry’s voice turns low: “Don’t move.”

Frank doesn’t move.

A heady sensation sweeps across Henry. Frank listening to him, like this. Looking like this. 

Henry’s fingers drag down his throat to his collarbone, fitfully. Frank’s cold, cold eyes track his hand and trace along his neck. Henry realizes he’s begun panting. Nerves and want.

“Want more of your -- ,” he lingers on the last syllable. “More of you.” 

Frank’s hand shoves Henry’s shirt up and Henry exhales long and starved.

A callous-rough palm flattens against Henry’s stomach, every sinew and synapse runs taut, and Frank can feel it, can feel his inexperience, his overexcitement --

Precise, he undoes the button on Henry’s jeans. He undoes Henry’s zipper. Movement as clipped as his voice. Aiming to kill.

“Wait.” Henry balls his fists there against the sheets. Find the words again to say --

“Y’gotta,” he builds on hope, “kiss me.” Frank’s hand leaves his navel, his disheveled clothing, “-- Before, before you --”

Frank draws in immediately, mouth shoving against mouth, Frank’s tongue slick and tracing the length of Henry’s lips before Henry opens his mouth. The taste of alcohol -- a difficult flavor. A loaded flavor. Childhood and hiding and running away -- and now, suddenly, loaded with Frank, the antithesis.

The end of all of that. 

Frank, the ending. Frank, blunt and resolute as punctuation, the way his hand scuffs at the side of Henry’s neck, and his mouth goes relentless on Henry’s. He kisses him open and flush -- a deep, spacious, searching kiss that draws Henry’s legs up around Frank’s sides in response.

Let this be the end for all he cares. Let this alone, Frank’s soft breath on his cheek and a kiss that he doesn't want to return from, be all the more there is.

Clumsy, Henry’s tongue pushes right back against the other. Their teeth click together, does that mean they’re too close or they’re just right --

When Henry’s tongue laps against Frank’s, follows into Frank’s mouth, Frank’s lips close around Henry’s tongue to suck at it. Henry allows a muffled whine and winds his arms around Frank to keep him. His hands find the dip between shoulder blades, the shift of muscle and the procession of Frank’s vertebrae.

Frank slides his tongue into Henry’s mouth again, deeper and dirtier now. Henry’s eyelashes flutter. He squirms, thighs tensing and clasping around Frank's waist.

Give and take.

And then, Frank breaks from Henry’s mouth and returns right to where he’d left off. He sinks lower as Henry stabilizes himself on his elbows again, his head swimming.

Henry makes a sound as if to stammer out something. Something -- but nothing comes to mind, no protestation. "Anticipation," Henry ponders through his preoccupation with Frank, has never threatened to swallow him whole like this before.

“Lift.” Frank gives the orders now.

A moment of muddy confusion and a uncoordinated adjustment of his legs, and Henry raises his hips.

Deftly, Frank catches him by his waist. He pulls Henry’s hips up high and supports his weight with his grip. For a moment, Henry’s ass presses against Frank and he feels the unmistakable line of Frank’s hard want, wanting him, he wants him, he wants like Henry wants, and Henry wonders what it would be like to -- but --

Frank doesn’t so much as pause. 

He reaches to where Frank has a hold on his waist, where his hips are raised prominent and shameless -- and he works around those hands to shuck his jeans off himself. They make it somewhere mid-thigh, impeded by Frank’s body and Henry’s own splayed legs. 

It seems enough for Frank, who uses one thumb to hook into his boxers and tug them down. 

Heart in his throat, Henry nearly reaches for Frank.

With no preamble, Frank raises Henry’s hips higher, ducks his head under the inhibiting jeans and underwear, and settles Henry’s thighs on his shoulders.

This feeling could drive him wild: his inner thighs kissing up against Frank’s neck and brushing against the thick hair on his head. He thinks this could be it until Frank bows his head (scratching line of his jaw against skin; Henry savagely biting his lips) and drags his tongue across the tip of his aching arousal, which is when he forgets how to think.

“Ohgoodoh _please_ ,” he hisses before pressing his knuckles hard against his mouth. Frank takes him into his mouth and slides him in halfway, and he will not let Henry so much as shift in his steel-strong grip.

He keeps Henry still, and sucks. And sucks. And sucks. And God --

Henry pants, harsh. His heels tap and then dig into Frank’s back as his eyes fall shut and he tries, needs to squirm, and can’t. Frank moves the heat of his mouth off of Henry, and back down. And again.

It’s good. It might be fantastic. It might be torture. It might be enough.

\-- No. Almost. No.

He’s going to come like this, frustrated and struggling, and only a minute into Frank’s face framed by his thighs, Frank’s hair longer than he expects when it falls across his forehead, and Frank’s fingers digging into his waist, fit to leave an impression, a mark --

He wriggles in Frank’s grip -- with little give, but Frank blinks down toward him where he’s gone desperate where he lies. It’s almost --

“Frank…” Smothered admission around the back of his hand.

Frank gives it another focused moment that sees Henry fighting to control himself, before his mouth drifts off Henry’s cock wetly, and Frank shifts his grip to raise Henry higher.

“Wh -- “ Henry pants.

Frank ducks his head again as he divests Henry of his hindrances of clothing where they hang off his limbs. He presses Henry to curl over himself just enough, enough to expose him entirely.

Before the utter confusion and embarrassment sweep in and calls Henry back to his senses, Frank ducks his head again, and that agonizing, proficient tongue swipes at his entrance -- 

White-out vision. 

Mouth falls open, but the sound arrives delayed and hoarse. “Ah,” he chokes out. “Ah.” His legs kick aimlessly. His heels knock against Frank’s shoulders. Henry’s hand bats unseeingly against Frank’s where it spreads him susceptible, vulnerable. And Frank licks up into him, against him.

He flinches. He tightens. He bucks.

Too good, too sensitive, too little, too much, it’s too much --

Frank’s mouth presses hot and demanding against him now as his searing tongue does its work. Ruthless.

Henry’s hand stays where it has hit out at Frank’s, clawing with an unfocused idle at Frank’s skin while he looks unseeingly up at the ceiling.

“Ah,” he whimpers, breathing ragged.

“Ah,” he sighs.

“Ah,” he shapes with his lips.

A furtive quiet settles between them but for the wet sounds Frank makes with his mouth down there, and the disheveled shift of bedding and clothing as Henry squirms and breathes erratic, all of his body catching and tensing as Frank’s tongue laps at him quicker.

A few minutes (how many?) in, Frank presses a thumb to Henry’s entrance.

Henry’s toes curl and his head turns to half-bury against his pillow. Frank presses in only to the first knuckle, just past, and it feels -- it feels. It feels, Henry wonders steadily, until Frank begins licking around him as he works his thumb in and out, shallow as an afterthought.

But it feels.

And Frank fucks the sound right out of him -- little noises bereft of meaning and intent, devastated and dreamy. “Mm,” he tries, “nnh,” he pleads, then a sharp “oh-oh” that he gasps in tandem with the moment when Frank slides his thumb out of Henry and replaces that emptiness with his tongue.

Henry sees fairy lights. He throws his head back against the pillow, undone.

“Frank,” he begins and ends, strangled and soft. 

What a feral sound that single syllable makes. Ferocious as love.

When Frank moves like he might stop, Henry reaches up, fisting his hand in Frank’s hair and grinding his hips against Frank’s face.

In the end, Henry comes with Frank’s mouth on his arousal again, locked still in Frank’s grip, Frank’s hold on him unbroken, the most beautiful feeling in the whole goddamn world. Like Henry is the most important thing here.

And it’s good, it’s fantastic, it could be torture, it _is_ , but the culmination, so long in wait at the precipice, teetering --

In the end, Henry comes with his whole body wracked in a shudder, and with laughter -- a woozy, stunned laughter that swoops in alongside the assault of pleasure, tender as a mugging. He dissolves into heaving sighs only when the last of his climax ebbs.

Frank finally lowers his waist down to the bed. His limbs draw close to his body, telling of overstimulation. 

The rest of reality he finds groggily, smeared in the margins: cold damp against his bare skin. The tea. The safehouse. Today.

When Henry cracks open his eyes, Frank, hair ruffled by Henry’s enthusiasm, is looking at him in something tantamount to curiosity.

Henry begins to feel for his humility, his embarrassment. There they are. They come racing back to him, they know all about him, but they can’t make it so deep into him the way Frank’s movement closer to Henry does.

In answer, Henry presses an uncertain hand to the waist of Frank’s trousers. Frank’s arousal tenting attentively there, his want -- Henry swallows away his exhaustion and inexperience. Scoots closer.

“Wait,” Frank mutters, offhand and preoccupied with technicality. Something in his pocket -- something filthy with murder, something needing safekeeping, something of the life they lead off of this cot. Some story of death. And just like every other day, it could be Frank’s death.

Or it could be Henry’s.

(There is no place in that story for the way Frank has looked at him as though he were a mystery to be solved.)

“Don’t wanna,” Henry argues, sitting up and reaching to Frank’s trousers and unbuttoning, unzipping.

And Frank allows him his impatience.

One last wish granted, Henry thinks with a terrifying thriving hunger for Frank; one last wish for the boy who wants as desperately as the dying do.

 

*

 

Another kettle of water boils. Another street name added to Frank’s list. Another crime family eradicated. 

Another few notes on written by hand. 

Sandwich crusts cut off.

Crusts eaten prudently out of Frank’s sight.

The sheets get washed in quarter-operated machines a nondescript number of blocks away.

Henry makes up his cot.

He and Frank share sleep only in the one or two hours before the wan dawn light turns to a glare. Henry always awakes first.

He can still, he imagines, remotely make out the shifting of shadows across the vast room, where Frank’s chest rises and falls in sleep. It steeps quietude throughout the pragmatical home they’ve constructed with purposeful nonchalance.

Henry sleeps alone on his fresh sheets and starts awake, as if from a dream, sometime after six in the morning. He almost forgoes caution, longing to tiptoe over to Frank and touch Frank’s hair where he’d gripped and pulled.

When the words between them returned, they lived off of radio interference and the interjection of murder and viscera. Frank will still and always speak of life and death through staccato requests and rebuffs. Action and reaction. 

Frank’s movement within the sound has grown familiar to Henry as himself. He could narrate Frank’s life in the minutes of silence stretched on a rack between them, fit to break. That is everyday. 

Everyday, thinks Henry right before he tells himself to stop and tell the story differently, is how the want never really stops. How it assails him when Frank leans over his shoulder or says his name. How they are both living, but never kiss again. How Frank touches his shoulder sometimes and Henry thinks, _If I keep wanting you like it’s the end of days, maybe we’ll live forever._

Or maybe the story is better told by Frank, who had once upon a time looked at Henry like he wanted to understand, and then knew to never look again. Most truthfully told like the top of a cold mountain, where nobody lives.

Ah, thinks Henry.

He gets up, makes up his cot, and puts on the kettle.


End file.
